Capacitors & Gold Caps are used to store energy in model locomotives and rail cars. The Capacitors & Gold Caps connected to the decoder and are used to...

Prevent stalling when passing over dirty track and unpowered frogs.

Provide uninterrupted sound playback from sound decoders.

Eliminate power loss when moving accross HLU and RailCom gaps.

Many ZIMO decoders feature a special connection design to ensure that the use of Capacitors & Gold Caps do not cause excessive charging currents (i.e. "In-rush current") and that they do not interfere with decoder programming or HLU and Railcom communications.

ZIMO recommends traditional electrolytic capacitors for use with small scale decoders (N, HO) because the gold cap solutions are large (usually largerer than the decoder itself) and expensive. Moreover, the gold caps are not really necessary because ZIMO decoders are designed with capacitors already on board. In addition, the "ordinary" cheap capacitors provide excellent long-term performance.

ZIMO offers a broad range of solutions, including capacitors or gold caps, for use with large scale decoders. In most cases, the use of simple capacitors (about 10,000 to 50,000 microfarads) is sufficient. The cost of this solution is very low and they can provide power for a few tenths of a second up to the full second range.

The effectiveness of electrolytic capacitors (see assortment ELKSOGR) is highly dependent on total amount of capacitance added to the model and power consumption of all of the devices in the model.

If greater capacitance or storage time is needed, Gold Cap arrays can be manufactured or purchased to provide an exponential increase in power. A product like the GOLDSORG can supply several seconds of electricity to a decoder when power is lost.